Archives: Expert Predictions

The Internet could fragment into a bunch of separate spheres, each with its own gatekeeper. It won’t happen right away, since most of the people who run Internet discussion lists and the like are still primarily interested in attracting people, not keeping them away … The net is providing people at the periphery of the global research system with ways of building a community for themselves by providing a useful public service. Let’s hope it stays that way.

What the Internet needs … is not rules and guidelines but a more fully functioning set of community standards. Although laws are certainly necessary for many sorts of things, community standards are better than laws because they are more flexible, more situational, cheaper, less dependent on supposedly objective authorities, and basically decentralized. Community standards are the best way to regulate a commons. And that’s what the Internet is – a commons. What does that mean? Well, we’re not talking about common ownership, since the Internet is owned by all sorts of organizations. Rather, we’re talking about a certain social system within the Internet, which includes, for example, the convention that discussion lists are open to all.

The net is full of people looking for business models these days, and several books and newsletters promise to explain how to advertise on the net. These people have caused much worry among net inhabitants who envision receiving floods of junk e-mail and the like. There are certainly things to worry about, but in my view this isn’t one of them. Internet folks have already suppressed numerous outbreaks of anti-social advertising through the simple method of flooding the offenders with flaming complaints. While ill-tempered flaming has its own costs, the basic method is an important one. Imagine if it were just as easy to complain to the people who send you *paper* junk mail.

Most Internet institutions are still remarkably open, in the sense that anybody can join and anybody can send messages at any time. Will this last? Will hordes of unacculturated beginners overwhelm it? Will advertising overwhelm it? Will cumbersome billing software overwhelm it? Will people start building walls around their network communities? Maybe not – if we understand and apply some principles for the maintenance of a commons.